What else happened at the September 9, 2009 meeting of the Savannah-Chatham Public School Board

Baby Buck: Savannah-Chatham Public School Board President Joe Buck missed the informal portion of the board’s monthly meeting to attend the birth of his first grandchild. He returned from the hospital just before the formal meeting with photos.

“I’d like to call this meeting to order as the new grandfather of a baby born on 9-9-2009,” Buck said. “She’s beautiful. Of course, she takes after her granddaddy.”

State waiver request: Savannah-Chatham officials will ask the state to bend some rules and allow the district to spend less in the classroom, change counselor schedules and increase gifted, early intervention and career-tech class sizes. The school board agreed to make the waiver request in a unanimous vote Wednesday.

The waiver, according to Chatham officials, will help the district work through state revenue shortages by allowing schools greater flexibility in scheduling and in the use of school staff resources.

Starting off right: Superintendent Thomas Lockamy had good things to say about the start of the 2009-2010 school year. “The feedback I have received from school principals is that this has been a very smooth school year opening,” Lockamy told board members Wednesday.

The district’s greatest challenge so far has been with student transportation, although problems with pick up locations, missed stops and late arrivals are down from previous years. This year the district changed bell times and made staffing and route adjustments to reduce operating costs.

Following are the high points of the first week of the 2009-2010 school year, according to Lockamy:

· Student enrollment is up 564 over this time last year. Although enrollment fell below projections by 241 students, there are more than anticipated numbers at the elementary level. The unexpected drop occurred at the secondary level.

· The Woodville - Tompkins Career and Technical Institute added a new aviation program. Currently there are 464 high school students taking coursework at Woodville-Tompkins. Twelve 12 have enrolled in the new aviation program so far.

· Isle of Hope Elementary School successfully added Grade 6 to their instructional program with 41 students enrolled. Hesse Elementary School successfully added Grade 7 with 105 students now enrolled in their middle grades program. There are 60 in 6th grade and 45 in 7th grade.

· Shuman Middle School’s new dedicated performing arts program was implemented at the 6th grade level, with 84 students enrolled in the program so far.

· Hubert Middle School has expanded the Riser’s Academy, an all male program, to the seventh grade. There are 51 young men in grades 6 and 7. Hubert also welcomed six grade students who were formerly zoned to attend Shuman Middle School. That move occurred as part of the first phase of the district reform plan, called Passport to Excellence.

· The new schools at Savannah High welcomed their first classes of students, with 741 currently enrolled in the School of Liberal Studies and 171 currently enrolled in the School of Law and Criminal Justice. Both new schools have been granted a clean academic standards record by the Georgia Department of Education.

Settlement: The board agreed to settle a Worker's Compensation Claim for a lump sum payment of $65,000 plus the cost of the Medicare Set-Aside Account, projected at approximately $25,000. The board will also contribute $3,309.90 for future medical treatment.

Core Knowledge: The board agreed to transfer funds previously budgeted for professional services to travel/registration to cover cost of Core Knowledge training for seven schools. Accordingly, the Chief Financial Officer requests the transfer of $175,000 to accomplish this realignment. The district plans to increase its Core Knowledge offerings at several schools as part of the district reform plan called Passport to Excellence.

Reading: Officials discussed plans to ensure that all students read on grade level by the end of second grade. They reviewed Lexile scores from CRCT data. A Lexile is a standard unit for measuring comprehensibility of text. A 330 Lexile is the district’s desired score for students at the end of 2nd grade. To accomplish that goal teachers have been trained, summer reading programs were enhanced and 54 teachers received reading endorsement training. However training is provided on a voluntary basis. Just 11 of the 54 were second grade teachers. Last year 62% of second grade students met the district’s Lexile score standard. Last year 55% met the standard with girls outperforming boys by far among all racial groups. While some schools did well others did poorly. And even those schools that did well had large disparities among racial groups.

“Something is really wrong,” Board member Irene Hines said.

District staff has observed reading instruction of every second grade teacher. Their data shows that vocabulary and comprehension is the district’s biggest problem. To get to where they want to go they will use a new reading series that promotes better vocabulary and comprehension. Curriculum maps were revised so expectations will exceed state standard. Benchmark assessments were revised and will focus more on non-fiction reading across the curriculum, which is proven to improve vocabulary and comprehension. The full score report is available on the district website in the board documents at http://www.boarddocs.com/ga/sccs/Board.nsf/Public?OpenFrameSet

Mentors: The district is still seeking community volunteers to be reading mentors to children. They need 800 volunteers for an online mentoring program called In2Books. Volunteers will purchase and read selected children’s books then discuss the book with a student by e-mail. Volunteers can register at In2Books.com. They must remember to select Savannah as their location so they can be matched with a local student.

Cuts: District officials revised allotment sheets to reflect the Governor’s state funding cuts and furloughs. The change also includes the health insurance rate has decrease from 18.534% to 17.363%, which resulted in a further reduction of state revenue. The total reduction was $7,009,463. In order to make up for the reduction the district cut nine vacant positions and instituted furlough days.

Board member Lori Brady said more cuts are to come from the state. “This community needs to understand this is not what the Savannah-Chatham County School Board has done. We were required by the governor to do this and it can get worse. It’s not us. It’s the governor and your legislators. Contact them and tell them you expect them to fund public education properly because you can expect to see this again.”

Bus routes: Full bus route schedule was approved unanimously and is available for public review on district’s website http://www.savannah.chatham.k12.ga.us/home/ Click on the school bus route icon along the right side of the webpage.

May Howard bike path: The board agreed to provide an easement of 330square feet along Cromwell Road for the completion of the McCorkle Bike Path at May Howard Elementary School.

ESPLOST : The board was presented with a detailed update on education sales tax funded school construction projects. Although several school improvements have been made revenues are down. In June the district collected $4.9 million. They expected to collect just over $5 million. The total collected so far is $45.3 million. Because of the low collections staff is discussing lowering the sales tax collection projections by $30 million. The district budgeted $357 million for projects and may have to alter those plans and has lowered projections and cut back on improvements once before. Possible options for scaling back the projects by $30 million were presented to the board. One of those options was to delay the construction of the new Westside high school.

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WHY DOES THE SCHOOL BOARD INSIST ON WASTING TAXPAYER MONEY BY REQUIREING DRIVERS TO PARK THE BUSES AT INTERCHANGE COURT OR GAMBLE ROAD. THIS ADDS AN ADDITIONAL 300 MILES TO MANY OF THE BUSES AT 5MPG PER SCHOOL DAY AND ALSO REQUIRES MORE PAY FOR THE DRIVERS DUE TO ADDITIONAL HOURS. THE PARKING AT INTERCHANGE COURT IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. THERE ARE NO LIGHTS AND THE LOT IS A MUDDY PIT EVEN IN A SLIGHT RAIN. THERE IS REBAR STICKING UP AND DEEP HOLES COVERED UP BY WOODEN PALLETS AS A TEMPORARY MEASURE. THERE IS ADDED DANGER BY THE TRAFFIC AT I-16. THERE IS ALSO INCREASED GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS PRODUCED BY THE BUSES AND THE PRIVATE VEHICLES BEING DRIVEN TO THE PARKING AREA 4 TIMES PER DAY. IS THE COUNTY TAXPAYER PREPARED FOR LAW SUITS FROM INJURIES SUFFERED IN A FALL IN THIS MUDDY PARKING AREA? THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO PARK THE BUSES AT INTERCHANGE COURT OR GAMBLE ROAD. FOR THE PAST 25 YEARS THE BUSES WERE ALLOWED TO PARK NEAR THEIR ROUTES, AT THEIR HOMES OR AT THE SCHOOLS. WHY DO WE NEED TO CHANGE AND SPEND ALL THE MONEY DURING A BUDGET CRUNCH?